


the heart wants what it wants

by watergator



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: it's three in the morning, and dan is wide awake, staring at the ceiling as phil sleeps peacefully beside him, as he thinks about his family, and what he does and doesn't have





	the heart wants what it wants

Dan doesn’t like to admit it, he’s mentioned it in a few videos, mostly as part of the persona he created on the internet as ‘danisnotonfire’, but his audience always seem to take his stories with a pinch of salt and never actually take him seriously, because he’s Dan.

But little do they know, his jealousy is a lot, lot worse than he lets on.

It’s not the jealousy of wanting everything to himself – no; it’s the sad kind, the type that had him lying awake wondering, why he didn’t have the same things.  
He was supposed to be asleep, by societies standards, and three am isn’t a particularly good time to be awake when you had a busy schedule of filming the next day.

But here he was, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness, save for the tiny slither of light that came from the crack in his door (because he was still afraid of the dark, even if he was 26 years old, he didn’t care), the silence giving his thoughts enough room to wonder aimlessly – it never was a good thing. He turned his head to his right, to see Phil, fast asleep, head buried comfortably in the pillow, mouth slightly open as he breathed softly. His fringe had fallen across his eyes and Dan had to resist every urge to brush it away – because as much as he wanted to, waking up Phil for something so dumb was silly.

Phil’s parents had been over for the weekend, leaving just the day before, to come see the new apartment, but more so to see their son and their son’s boyfriend.  
Dan loved Phil’s parents, in fact, Dan loved all of Phil’s family – even the weird extended ones.  
That’s what set it off, he could always tell. Whenever Phil had his family over, Dan would get that same feeling all over his body; his head, heart, stomach – even in his lungs.  
That horrible, jealousy.

He wished he could turn it off, wished he could brush it aside and get over it, but no matter how hard he tried, it always seemed to creep up on him in the night, engulfing his brain and thoughts.

See, the problem wasn’t just one – it was a few.

Phil was very close to his parents; they still went on vacations together, even at the age of thirty, he called his mum almost every other night just to chat, Phil would receive bizarre gifts on the holidays, the type of gifts that had crazy inside jokes behind them, and Phil could talk a mile a minute about his family and all the crazy adventures they’d get up to.  
And Dan loved that – he really did. There would be nights when the two of them would curl up on the sofa, Dan’s head resting on Phil’s shoulder, feeling in bounce as he laughed, telling crazy stories of his childhood, some of which would have them both of them in fits of laughter.

But Dan was so jealous of that.

The other part of this problem was that Dan desperately wanted that.  
It was no secret that Dan liked to keep his family aside from the internet, he could completely understand their wishes – but it seemed as if Dan’s family wanted to keep aside from Dan.

When Phil told his parent’s about YouTube, they had encouraged him, laughed and celebrated, joking about how they would have to learn how to use the internet.  
They had so much faith and trust in their son that they completely let him do the whole ‘video thing’, not once doubting him.

But when Dan told his parent’s about YouTube, it was a very different story. They didn’t understand, and Dan used to put it down to, ‘parents are old, they don’t get it’, but Phil’s parents were older than Dan’s, and Dan wished he didn’t have to make excuses for them all the time.  
YouTube was a big dirty secret back then, but when he decided to meet with Phil for the first time, he knew he had to tell them.  
It just didn’t go as well as he had wished.

He wished they’d shown a tiny amount of interest.  
He wished they’d try and understand.  
He wished they’d given him encouragement.  
He wished they’d at least watch one video.

But here he was, eight years later, and he was sure neither of his parents had so much as even been on his channel.

But nonetheless, his parents let him get on with it, with the promise that he was going to university – and that was just another pile of the problems.

But Dan knew his parents didn’t get it, and probably never would. Dan knew it was false hope in even caring what they thought. It wasn’t as if he held a grudge, it wasn’t as if his stomach flipped every time he thought about them, or how sick he felt when he so much as saw Phil’s video with his mum.

He just couldn’t help it.

Time seemed to slow down because when Dan looked at his phone, only a couple of minutes had really only passed.

Dan thinks about Martyn. Phil’s brother.  
He loves Martyn. He loves Cornelia too, they are all so close, and since Dan was the youngest out of the four, they would often treat him like the baby – not that Dan minded.

It was a nice change of pace.

Dan flicked through his messages on his phone, the last ones being from Phil, from earlier that morning reminding Dan they were out of cereal, then there was one from Louise, just a casual chat, and then Martyn, talking about the shop and business and something about Phil, probably.

He smiled slightly, before that horrible feeling wormed its way back up from his stomach and into his throat.

He thinks about his own brother for a second, how he didn’t even have him on here – it had been so long since they last spoke, Dan wasn’t even sure when it was.  
He’d seen him briefly at Christmas, but they hardly even shared passing glances.

He had always put it down to the age gap between the two, there was eight years between them, and Dan was a teenager when his brother was growing up – but Dan couldn’t help but feel jealous when he saw Phil and Martyn, even Cornelia that treated Phil like her little brother, it made Dan a little mad in all honesty.

Martyn worked hard, because he loves Phil, they’re best friends (even though Dan knows he takes top spot for that) and Phil is so comfortable around him, Dan can’t help but wish he had that.

But Dan’s brother is nineteen now, totally uninterested in family-get-togethers, and even more uninterested in Dan – he hardly looks at him anymore, not that he ever really did. It’s nothing new, but it’s another thing Dan wishes he had. 

There’s so much Dan wishes he had, wishes he has what Phil has. It had always been like that.  
He remembers when he first visited Phil, back in the fall of 2009, not only being star-struck by Phil himself – but by his house.

It was so big, a large back yard, and rooms to spare.  
(Not that Dan ever used any of them)  
And to Phil, it seemed funny that Dan was impressed by his house, but it’s because Dan is used to the tiny house he shares with his parents and brother, with one bathroom instead of the three that Phil has, and the small square of grass he has back at home, instead of the rolling fields Phil has behind his house.

And that’s where it all starts. The jealousy. 

Dan’s not poor; his parents have taken him to places like India and Australia before – incredible places.  
But they save for that in advance. It was times like Dan asked for a keyboard when they would sit him down and explain how they just couldn’t afford to buy something that he’d probably lose interest in after a short period.

Little do they know Dan excels in piano years later and they don’t even realise it.

Dan learnt as a kid that if you wanted something, you work hard for it – and it’s a good lesson, and he’s half grateful that he got shown that way, that he earnt his possessions through scrubbing his neighbours cars, or waking up at the crack of dawn to walk other people’s dogs.  
But when he hears stories about Phil waking up on Christmas Day to a PlayStation One, Dan can’t help but feel cheated a little.

Dan doesn’t mention it, he notices a few remarks in the comments of his videos, and it’s his fault really, because sometimes he’ll make a snarky remark about his family, half joking, because he knows they’ll never see it anyways.

But he never expects Phil to pick up on it, and it’s only after one night after filming a Sims video when Phil pipes up from behind his laptop.

“You know Matey Bubble Bath was only like, £3, right?” 

Dan heart squeezes in his chest, because he knows that – he knows exactly how much the bubble bath is, and he can tell that Phil is trying to read him right now as they lay across the sofa from one another,

“I know” Dan says, trying to swallow down any type of emotion, “I was only kidding” he adds, and he hates lying, but he knows he can convince Phil. He can convince himself.

Phil looks back at his laptop screen, the light reflecting off his glasses, and smiles,  
“I was gonna say,” he laughs lightheadedly, “otherwise that’d mean your parents were like, the worst or something”

Phil doesn’t mean it, and Dan knows that, Dan can tell the genuine look behind Phil’s eyes – that it was an offhand joke, and Dan laughs back, a little too stale, because as his attention goes back to his phone, he catches Phil looking back at him.  
But Dan swallows it down and ignores it, like he always has done. 

But after the two week holiday in Florida with the entire Lester clan, and the weekend he’d just had – it had all hit him fast and hard, and he was still awake, half an hour later, head too loud to fall asleep.

The ceiling blurs. He loves his family, he really does, it’s just a bit shitty, and it always has been.  
But nonetheless he loves them, and visits them once a year (as opposed to Phil seeing his more than he ever really needs to) and he does care – but he still wishes it was a bit different.

The ceiling clears. Tears now roll down his face. This isn’t something new, he’s so used to crying, he’s had worse. 

He thinks back to the day’s before he’d met Phil in the flesh, back when he was just pixels on a screen. There had been a few times when Phil would answer the call, face falling as he saw Dan crying, comforting over the dumbest things.  
Dan was so sure Phil would get sick of him, sick of a whiny little teenager, crying over things like arguments with his dad or his mum threatening to take YouTube away from him.  
It was so stupid to Dan, but Phil stayed. Obviously.

There had been an argument, about Dan’s hair. His fucking hair. Dan grimaces at the memory, about how his Dad didn’t want him straightening his hair, because Dan wasn’t a “fucking fairy”.

It had been so colossal and messy, and Dan never yelled back. Never. But after a whole day of dealing with a few assholes at school, the same one’s he’d been dealing with through his entire school experience, Dan was in a bad enough mood, and he screamed.  
He yelled in his father’s face, telling him to fuck off – something Dan never had dared to do before.  
And he never did again.  
Because when he felt the slap across his jaw, it seemed to ricochet through his entire body, and as he stumbled backwards, he felt the words that were in his throat before, dry up almost instantly.

He knew, he knew from his father’s look that he had regretted it. But there was no apologies or talks, hell, Dan was too afraid to cry in front of him.  
But he sucked it up, ‘like a man’, and they spoke no more of it. Because it never happened again. He’s glad for that.  
And months later, after Dan had plucked up the courage to talk to Phil over Twitter, during one late night chat, he asked him if his parents had ever hit him before, putting it so subtlety that his new friend wouldn’t catch on, so when Phil replied with an obvious, “no?”, Dan cried again that night.

Tears were now pouring down his face, reaching his neck, where they soaked into the pillow, and Dan was thankful it was dark enough that he couldn’t see them, in case Phil awoke.

Dan was pretty good at hiding his feelings in front of Phil, even after eight years, Phil was sure he could catch him out – but little did he know that Dan had mastered the art of crying in the dark.

He tried not to move, because he desperately didn’t want Phil to wake up. Of course, he craved so much of Phil’s attention – realising it was probably to make up the lack of thereof from when he was younger, but he also knew that this little mini breakdown he was having would wash over, and he’d be asleep soon, too tired to cry anymore and tomorrow would be okay. 

As long as kept his thoughts at bay – which was what he almost always did.

But Dan knew he was happy. If he compared himself now to himself in 2012, he would laugh, because he had grown so much, so much in himself, and he was proud of that, Phil was proud of that, even Phil’s parents were proud of that.

But there was people in Dan’s life that didn’t seem proud. And that obviously, was his parents.

But he’s so used to that; his parent’s not being proud. He’s so used to the uninterested sighs when Dan tells them they’re going to Japan, or the forced enthusiasm when he explains their plans for the book he and Phil are planning on making.

It’s not like they’ve never been proud in his life, no, they’re not that cruel, but Dan wishes that perhaps for once they could just stop pretending to care. It’s so much more worse.

He knows that he’s disappointed them. He knew it from the phone call he had, back when he dropped out of uni – he knew then, he was taking a risk, but even though after two books, a stage show and app and a hit single, Dan feels like he still can’t convince his parents that dropping out was a good idea.  
But once again, Dan rolls with it.

He’s thankful for Phil’s parents, for the love and enthusiasm they shower him with, and when Phil blushes and says, “Mum stop! You’re embarrassing him!” Dan is so grateful that she doesn’t listen to her son, and continues to swarm Dan with love.

But Dan is so torn in half, because even though it’s almost four in the morning, and his head is swarming with all these bad thoughts, he remembers the good ones too.

He thinks back to 2010, when he was a love sick puppy, stranded in India. He’d only known Phil for a few months, but the way he would complain about wanting to go back home, you’d think he’d known him his whole life and this was their first time apart.  
He remembered after one night, his dad and brother and gone off, joking around – they were always a lot closer, and Dan was missing Phil, hard, Dan’s mum had dragged him to a bar, and make him do shots with her to cheer him up. He remembers, even though he was intoxicated, pouring his heart out to her, probably the first time in a long time, about being in love with Phil.  
At the time, Phil was just a name to her – a boy her son liked over the internet, a boy that eventually became real in his world, a boy that made her boy happy.  
But she listened, and she really did – that was what made Dan remember it, because she actually cared.  
He thinks back to how they were on the floor of the busy bar, crying with laughter at old memories, oblivious to the rest of the bar as they talk and laugh, and drink, the night away.

It’s one of the rare memories that Dan cherishes. 

He also remembers the days him and his dad would get in the car, just for the drive, sit in silence and listen to the music they liked.  
He misses that night in India and he misses the long day drives with his dad.

He misses the days he’d come home from school, tired and feeling emotionally exhausted from the taunts from his bullies, only to have his brother run up to him, drag him to the lounge to challenge him to a game of DDR. 

He misses those tiny things he had – even though Phil has a million and one happy things with his family, Dan is grateful for the handful of happy things he has with his.

But it’s just coming up to four now, and he’s only just now starting to feel tired. He breathes for a second, before rolling onto his side.  
His face is now facing Phil’s, noses almost touching and Dan can feel the breath of his boyfriend on his face.

He tries to snuggle in, get a little closer, just for his own comfort, but he hears a rustle and he freezes, because if Phil is awake, he’ll know that Dan is.

“Dan?” he whispers, almost as if he’s calling out to a ghost.

There’s no point in trying to lie, so Dan releases the breath he’s been holding and sighs,

“Hi” his voice comes out raw, probably from the lack of sleep, and even in the dark Dan can see the frown on the other boys face.

“What’s up?” Phil asks, voice still hushed. He doesn’t really need to ask; he always knows when something is bothering him – like he has an extra ‘Dan-Sense’ or something. 

Dan sighs again, wondering if he should roll onto his back again, but he knows that a dangerous bet; if he stares at the ceiling for too long again, he’ll be sucked back into the same loop of existentialism as before.  
And besides, looking at Phil isn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Family” Dan manages to mutter, because sleep is really catching up on him now, almost as if it’s trying to drag him down into the underworld.

“Family?” Phil questions, and Dan just nods, but before Phil can talk, Dan has opened his mouth.

“It’s just,” Dan starts, and now he’s started to close his eyes, they’re so sore, “I wish, sometimes” he says after a while.

There’s a small silence, before Phil speaks again,  
“Wish for what, Dan?”

Dan wants to melt into Phil’s voice, because it’s so warm and comforting, and it feels so much like home,

“Wish I had what you have” his voice is quieter this time, a little more husky from the sleep dripping from it.

He feels Phil shift, giving Dan his cue to move closer, his head now is buried in his chest, knees tucked up under his chin, almost like a child, and Phil has curled around him protectively.

“What d’you mean?” Phil asks sleepily, because it’s still four am. 

“Y’know,” Dan mumbles into Phil’s shirt, lifting his head a little for it to be audible, “Wish m’family loved me as much yours love you”

It’s not supposed to come out like that, because Dan knows his family loves him, of course they do; but the exhaustion and the emotion seem to be taking over now and his brain has been set loose.

“Dan,” Phil says, his tone strong, “that’s not true” he comforts him, his hand has reached his back now and he’s tracing patters across his shoulder blades and spine.

“Is so” Dan mutters childishly, but Phil gives a small smile, not that Dan can see it, but sometimes he forgets how young Dan can be at times.

“They didn’t even,” Dan starts, and Phil can sense a change in his demeanour, “they didn’t even come to the fucking after party” he spits bitterly, and Phil can tell he’s crying.

It’s true, Phil wishes he could disagree – but it’s so horribly true and it hurts Phil. After the tour, they decided to celebrate, naturally, and aside from the YouTube after party they decided that something a little more personal would be nice, so both of them invited their families over for drinks.  
However, Dan’s parents, couldn’t make it.  
Phil’s uncle from Australia made it. Phil’s weird aunt made it. Nearly all of Phil’s family made it.

But all Dan had, was his grandparents. 

Of course, Dan also had Phil – but it wasn’t really the same thing.  
He could tell how embarrassed he was, how ashamed he felt, for only having his grandparents show up, but the way Dan seemed to swallow it all down and continue the night like normal, Phil had guessed that Dan was used to this sort of thing.

“When we won the radio award” Dan spoke again, his voice was now trembling with tears, “all she did was fucking text me” he sobbed, clutching at Phil’s shirt.

Phil held him, pulling him as humanely possible, rubbing soothing circles on his back as Dan hiccupped through his cries.

“Dan” Phil said gently, after a while, letting his boyfriend calm down.

Dan pulled away, so he was facing Phil again. It was hard to see in the dark but he was so close he could just about see the outline of his face.

“Dan,” Phil said again, just as Dan used the back of his hand to wipe away stray tears, “do you wanna know something?” he asked, his voice was soft, almost as if it was floating.

Dan nodded, then quickly added, “okay” when he realised Phil might not be able to see him.

“Your family do love you” Phil spoke, his hand reaching Dan’s cheek to cup it gently,

“And do you wanna know how I know that?” he asked, and Dan nodded again.

“Because you are my family”

There was silence, and then the sound of sniffles, and when Dan’s arm went back at his face again, he guessed he had started crying again.

“I will always love you, Dan” he whispered, pulling Dan back to his chest again, “and I’m so proud of you” he added, feeling Dan snuggle closer.

They stayed there for a while, listening to the other breathe, when Phil spoke out again,

“You know, they do love you, right?”

Dan nodded against his chest sleepily.

“They just have a very funny way of showing it sometimes” Phil added, closing his eyes.

“Besides,” Dan spoke, “All I need is your love” he could practically feel the smile on his lip, as he drifted off to sleep.

Phil pressed a kiss into his hair, burying his nose into his soft curls,

“Get some rest Dan” he murmured, just before he was attacked by a yawn.

“Love you” Phil managed to get out before sleep pulled him under,

“Love you too”

Sleep had taken Phil, and it was beginning to take Dan too, but as he closed his eyes, the last of this tears escaping him, he let out a calm breath.

Parents weren’t always easy. They were a real fucking pain in the ass most of the time. Families were complicated, families were annoying; but families were where your heart lay – and Dan knew exactly where his heart was.

Right here.

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: this is my first and probably last phanfic. i used to feel uncomfortable about writing fanfic about real people, but decided to give it a go, just to boost my creative flair. i would like to stress that this is clearly FICTIONAL - i dont know anything about dans family or his relationship with his family and in no way intend to harm dan or his family in this, its obviously all fake (thats why its called a fanFICTION lol) and the events in this story arent real. i understand the privacy of dans family and would appreciate it if you all did too!! this is kinda venty, but i hope you enjoyed it !! 
> 
> dont forget to leave a comment or a kudos!! they really help !! thanks :)


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